London II

Borough Market. My aim in life is to be able to afford food from here.

Tate Modern. My aim in life is to be able to afford most of the books from here.

Brick Lane.

The LCC Photography and Communication show was good. It had floating balls and a crowd of onlookers. Light boxes for slides for every hour of the day and a sensored orchestra you could control when you touched a coloured pad. Apparently each individual has their own specific electric charge so the outcome for everyone will be different.

What was less than impressive was the De Montfort Photography show. I'm not usually negative about work, which is perhaps a flaw I need to correct, for I remember someone saying your individuality is determined more so by what you hate than by what you like. If this is the case then my personality is dictated by my dislike of diamante and the word 'armpit'. Make of that what you will. Anyway, there was about two pieces in the entire space I liked. There was work supposedly conveying a serious political point. It didn't. It was kitsch and looked cheap, like those canvases you buy in homeware shops with black and white images and then a solitary red London bus or something. A photo that referenced Blair's role in the Iraq war was rendered thus, any serious gravity it held was completely undermined by a shocking aesthetic. Fluorescent yellow police jackets against a grainy black and white image. Oh dear. There was work that seemed to bear little consideration as to a subject, as though a sustained practice had yet to be salvaged. If anything the work on show was a chance to merely show off the quality of the camera used and the colour saturation than anything else of any significance. On the plus side there was a couple of nice double exposures and it was in a really nice setting. Though I got bike envy every single time an indie girl cycled past.